My 1994 Listening Log

Who else is tired of new music? Just kidding, I’m definitely not (if you read this blog, you’re aware of that), but I have brought back a semi-regular blog feature in which I listen to some non-new music on a daily basis. So here’s the deal with this listening log: during the new music lull of December and January, I listened to one new-to-me album from 1994 (almost) every day, wrote down a little bit of what I thought about it, and posted this in the Rosy Overdrive Discord (which, if you’re looking for a social media-type place that doesn’t openly promote fascism, it’s a nice one to join). I’ve done this a few times now, with the years 1981, 1993, and 1997, and 1994 didn’t disappoint!

Note that these are only albums I’d never listened to in full before; I’ve heard, by my count, around 150 albums from 1994 before I started this exercise, so if you’re wondering why something well-known/up Rosy Overdrive’s alley isn’t here, it’s probably because I’ve heard it already (I still haven’t heard the first Oasis album yet, though. I made it through 36 albums without biting the bullet on that one).

Bandcamp embeds are included when available.

12/14: The High Llamas – Gideon Gaye (Target)

Starting this exercise looking back at thirty years ago with an album that looks back thirty years before that. Wilco was still an alt-country band, The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev were wild rock and rollers, Elephant 6 was still in the basement—but here are The High Llamas, leading the way with pristine, polished Brian Wilson keys and strings. I like my 60s worship a bit more mussed up, so perhaps I appreciate more than like this, but I “appreciate” it a good deal. They never fully unbutton, but looser stuff like “Checking In, Checking Out” is more my speed. Don’t know if “Track Goes By” needed to be thirteen minutes but the first half is so good it doesn’t really matter. 

12/15: The Veldt – Afrodisiac (UMG)

Considering how much I enjoyed their early archival release from last year, it seems past time to give The Veldt’s most well-known record a shot. The soul/R&B influence was much more “implied” on Illumination 1989, which was a more straightforward dream pop-gaze album; here, it feels like a genuine attempt to synthesize the two genres. Not much sounds like this, maybe the Afghan Whigs would be the closest I can think of but that’s still not quite right. No one was ready for this in ‘94, and unfortunately the current shoegaze revival has emphasized more anonymous-feeling elements of the genre, so a Veldt revival feels unlikely. This is not an entirely successful album, and certainly could’ve used a bit of trimming, but there’s more than enough to justify the experiment and the Veldt get points for inventiveness in my book.

12/16 Fuzzy – s/t (Seed)

This is easily the most “nineties-sounding” album I’ve done yet—and, probably not coincidentally, it’s also my favorite one yet. These New England no-hit wonders slot very nicely right next to peers like Belly, Juliana Hatfield, even Dinosaur Jr. (do you like guitars?). Fuzzy do not overthink it; these songs are one big alt-rock pop hook after another after another. Even things like “Now I Know” where it seems like they’re going for something more subtle end up with fireworks. I’m not sure if the “where’s my knife?” call and response thing in (the excellent) “Lemon Rind” is supposed to be funny, but it is. I love how the drumbeat in “Sports” sounds like a basketball. This one doesn’t quit, huh. Bandleader Hilken Mancini released a good album [last] year, by the way.

12/17: Sinead O’Connor – Universal Mother (Ensign/Chrysalis)

I really gained something sitting down and taking this one in front-to-back. These songs are good, but as a whole statement it’s something else. Really was only familiar with I Do Not Want… before; this is more difficult, more thoughtful, less outward bloodletting. It’s still there, like in the finale of “Red Football”, or “Fire on Babylon” which is an excellent opening hook. Songs like “All Babies” make the most sense as Irish folk music that’s happened to be penned by O’Connor. The “All Apologies” cover is, again, haunting on its own but turns into something even harder in the album (she’s probably one of the few people who can sing that song and “get” it). The trip hop song about how the Irish “potato famine” is a colonialist myth is a huge musical sore thumb in a record of more subdued piano/folk, but it absolutely makes sense as part of O’Connor’s thesis. And it rules.

“An American army regulation / Says you mustn’t kill more than ten percent of a nation / Because to do so causes permanent psychological damage / It’s not permanent, but they didn’t know that”

12/18: aMiniature – Depth Five Rate Six (Restless)

Alright, alright, indie rock time. This album came out of San Diego the same year that Yank Crime did, and I’ve seen aMiniature called a “post-hardcore” band before, but they’re a lot more….normal-sounding than Drive Like Jehu. It’s one part West Coast indie punk, one part fuzzed-out indie rock; kind of like the midpoint between Jawbreaker and, say, Versus (who they apparently toured with). If you’re like me and have heard roughly 10,000 albums that sound like this to some degree, this isn’t going to blow you away immediately. Still, though, there’s something to this. There’s a tough backbone to the band that gets more pronounced when they get a little more punk sounding in the last few tracks (probably my favorite stretch). Not sure if I’ll personally return to it but worth checking if it sounds like your bag.

12/19 Digable Planets – Blowout Comb (Capitol)

I wanted to make sure to do this one because their debut album was one of my favorite discoveries of the 1993 edition of this exercise. From what I remember of Reachin’, this one isn’t an extension of that album so much as an expansion. Clearly the same jazz-rap group, but they’ve leaned a bit harder into chilled-out and esoteric. Not that the last one was some huge pop-rap thing but there’s less of that and more lengthy stretched-out jazzy journeys. Hard to follow everything they’re talking about just from the one and a half listens I’ve done so far, but certainly caught the parts against fascism and the line about studying Mao. Starting with Reachin’ worked for me, I’d recommend that to anyone else unfamiliar, but do continue to this one if it works for you.

12/20: Dog Faced Hermans – Those Deep Buds (Konkurrel/Alternative Tentacles)

The final album from the cult horn-punk group (who I’m pretty sure I’ve done in these exercises before). They’re a consistently great band, I always enjoy listening to their albums, and this was no exception. Compared to the previous two, this is maybe a little more jammy/experimental; not that they were ever an orthodox punk band but this is about as far away from it as they got (among the LPs I’ve heard). “Human Spark” probably starts the most punk-like and even that one lapses into noise/oddness. It’s not Leaves Turn Inside You-level post-post-hardcore (they still more or less sound like DFH did on their previous albums), but I get the sense that they would’ve gotten there if they kept going.

12/21: Butterglory – Crumble (Merge)

Finally getting around to checking out the music of one of the most frequent “fans also like” bands in my life. People talk about Butterglory like they were Pavement ripoffs but they only really remind me of Pavement on a surface level (and the guitar line in “Jinxed” is very Pavement, yes). It’s more pop-forward, less “band jams” and more like a couple of Flying Nun/college rock fans adding their own lo-fi Americana spin on it (I believe they were just a duo at this point). Actually, this sounds a lot more like all the modern bands that people complain are “just Pavement ripoffs” than Pavement do. Plenty of mixtape candidates here. Maybe if I’d heard this when I was first discovering Yo La Tengo and Archers of Loaf it’d be a core record for me, maybe not, but now it sounds like a solid and pretty indie rock record (more or less like I thought it’d be). I’m not sure if we’re far enough down the nostalgia-festival rabbit hole for a Vegas fest to offer Butterglory an absurd amount of money to reunite, but we can hold out hope.

12/22: Madder Rose – Panic On (Atlantic)

This is another band whose 1993 album I enjoyed so I’m going in for round two. My initial impression of this one was that it wasn’t as good as the previous year’s Bring It Down (or their most recent LP from 2023, for that matter), but I’m glad I waited until starting a second run through to write this entry because it’s sounding a lot better this time around. They’re still making moderately fuzzy, mostly poppy vintage-sounding 90s alt rock without much in terms of bells or whistles—this might actually be the most stripped-down/streamlined version of Madder Rose I’ve heard. It does start off kind of slow but goes on a hot streak beginning with the title track with every song having a really strong hook of some kind or another. I suspect it pairs nicely with Bring It Down back to back.

12/23 Peter Jefferies – Electricity (Ajax/Raffmond)

There’s no way I was getting through this exercise without checking out at least one of the New Zealand records I hadn’t yet gotten around to. Peter seems to be the more iconoclastic and stranger of the two Jefferies brothers; what I’ve heard from his solo career is less approachable than Graeme’s band The Cakekitchen, on average at least. This one feels like a proper album, Jefferies’ piano-centric playing anchoring stuff that can swing from cacophonous to harrowing to plain gorgeous. There’s nothing as immediately stunning as my favorite song of his, “On an Unknown Beach”, but there’s a lot of beauty on here. Pretty singular listen.

12/25 Sleepyhead – Starduster (Homestead)

I’ve written about Sleepyhead for the blog before but this is the first time they’ve shown up in one of these posts, I think. Great little semi-forgotten indie rock/indie pop group from Boston who put stuff out on Slumberland and Homestead (this one’s from the latter). Sleepyhead have a formula they typically stick to—energetic, slapdash, but relatively clean-sounding indie rock instrumentals with, uh, casual and off-the-cuff vocals singing throwback-style pop melodies. This one is kind of on the punk-y end of indie pop, if you’re into groups like Boyracer and the more rocking side of K Records they’re right in the mix there.

12/26 The Mavericks – What a Crying Shame (MCA Nashville/Geffen)

Hey, there’s no “alt” in this country! Not that I was expecting No Depression-era Uncle Tupelo or anything, but I don’t think I appreciated that The Mavericks are straight-up neo-traditionalists—or they are on this album, at least. They’ve supposedly made a career out of blending classic country music with Latin and Tex-Mex influences—but if they’re present on What a Crying Shame, they’re very faint indeed. This album’s got more in common with Dwight Yoakam or even early rockabilly (and not the Reverend Horton Heat/Bloodshot kind); not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily. Maybe not an “essential” album, but it’s hard to argue with fun stuff like “There Goes My Heart” and “The Things You Said to Me”. Side note: this album is how I found out that there’s a prolific country songwriter who was born in Greece and goes simply by “Kostas” (and I’d bet that part of the reason I was reminded of Yoakam is that Kostas has written for him, too).

12/27: Smoking Popes – Born to Quit (Johann’s Face/Capitol)

Pop punk is supposed to evoke feelings of youthfulness, right? Well, that’s not what we get from Smoking Popes, who already sound tired and middle-aged on their breakout album (which most people heard via the 1995 Capitol re-release but was first released in ‘94). The whole album doesn’t really sound like the band’s single hit, the bizarre Morrissey/pop punk hybrid “Need You Around”, but it still sounds like it would be a clear black sheep in the Chicago punk scene from which they arose*. Josh Caterer sings “I’d rather be too young than too old / To feel the way I do about you” over a very tasteful college rock instrumental in “Mrs. You and Me”; Smoking Popes let this desperation speak for itself rather than Blink-182 it up. Some really catchy stuff here (see the first two songs) although it does kind of lose some steam. As for “Need You Around”—well, nothing else really sounds like it, still.

(*note: Discord user Dan Gorman aka The Discover Tab pointed out to me that, between the Popes and bands like the Alkaline Trio and The Lawrence Arms, this darker, maybe more “mature” take on pop punk wasn’t so out of line with what was going on in the Windy City after all)

12/28 Laurie Anderson – Bright Red (Warner Bros.)

Well, this is a Laurie Anderson album. I like Laurie Anderson—I’ve heard Big Science and at least one of the other 80s albums—and I can get behind this, but I couldn’t imagine anybody who can’t get down with “O Superman” enjoying this. Not that it’s wildly inaccessible, even for her—the opening song, “Speechless” is dark but pop. Of course, the title track is pure darkness and creepiness right afterward, and there’s an uneasiness throughout this album that conflicts with its occasional attempts at catchiness (like “Beautiful Pea Green Boat”). The moments where Anderson cuts through the veil—like the line “When my father died it was like a whole library burned down” in “World Without End”—land with a thud. There’s an interesting fixation with former partners who’ve moved onto new lovers in this album, which, combined with some apocalyptic themes, feels like some Anderson-grade catastrophizing. It’s more or less—oh, shit, is that Lou Reed singing lead vocals on “In Our Sleep”?

12/29 Three Mile Pilot – The Chief Assassin to the Sinister (Headhunter/Geffen)

We’re going back to San Diego today! This is another one with multiple releases—Geffen put it out the following year with a couple of extra tracks. Members of this band would go on to play in The Black Heart Procession and Pinback, but neither of those bands really sound like The Chief Assassin to the Sinister. It’s actually pretty tricky to pinpoint this one—Wikipedia says noise rock and math rock, neither of which are totally right. There are noisy moments, there are some mathy ones, some Black Heart Procession-y noir detours, even a bit of emo. It’s like somewhere between the explosive garage-y post-hardcore stuff of their home city and sprawling indie rock from a few states north of them. It’s not as…immediately satisfying as a lot of their peers, but that’s not a bad thing. In fact I quite like this, I think—probably more than what I’ve heard from their successor bands.

12/30 The Figgs – Low-Fi at Society High (Imago/Stomper)

Low-Fi? At Society High? It’s more likely than you think! This is one of these “cult 90s power pop albums”, or at least that’s my impression going into it. Maybe it’s due to the very nineties-sounding lead vocals, but this feels a lot more “1994” than I was initially expecting; I think it slots solidly into the Fig Dish strain of post-grunge/alt-rock-flavored power pop. The Figgs add quick tempos, relative brevity, and plenty of guitar solos to the mix—this is more or less the Low-Fi at Society High formula, and I can report that it works. Apparently they played as Graham Parker’s band at one point which makes sense—parts of this album remind me of the 70s power pop/rock and roll troubadours but updated musically for the times. The ingredients are pretty simple so the songs kind of bleed into each other, but I feel pretty positive about this one initially.

12/31 Palace Brothers – Days in the Wake (Drag City)

My familiarity with Will Oldham and his various projects is admittedly pretty spotty (I See a Darkness? Great! The album he did with Matt Sweeney a couple years ago? Pretty good!), so this is a good opportunity to check out one of his earliest albums (as Palace Brothers, which would become Palace Music and eventually Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy). It’s under thirty minutes long and almost entirely just Oldham and his guitar (“Come a Little Dog” has bass and drums). There’s some very good songs on here—namely, “I Send My Love to You” and “No More Workhorse Blues” stick out—but this isn’t the album to make me a BPB evangelist. If I already was, I imagine I’d appreciate it more as a nice early album before the (presumable) masterpieces.

1/1 Magnapop – Hot Boxing (Play It Again Sam/Priority)

This Athens, GA band has a bunch of legit early college/alt-rock connections—Bob Mould produced this album, Michael Stipe produced some of their others, the lead vocalist previously was in a band with Matthew Sweet. That being said, this album fits in very well with the then-present state of power pop—loud guitars, aggressive power chords, and a 90s drollness are all key features of Hot Boxing (I’m sure Mould’s production helped this along to some degree). It’s one of the best-sounding albums I’ve done for this exercise, and it’s a fun listen (especially towards the end where they blow through a bunch of short songs quickly). Still, I didn’t like it quite as much as I wanted to. Something missing from a lot of the songs to make them extra memorable, I think? Worth a listen if any of this sounds good to you, though.

1/1 Ida – Tales of Brave Ida (Simple Machines)

I missed a day on Christmas Eve, so I’m doing two on New Years to make up for it. This is the long-running folk-slowcore duo’s first album, and it is, indeed, somewhere between a “folk” and “slowcore” album. It’s not “lo-fi” but there’s a nineties-ish simplicity to these songs—two guitars playing together (or off each other), two vocalists singing together (or off each other), usually that’s it. Not trying to lean into folk traditionalism, not trying to pad things out into a rock band. The acoustic moments are strummy and fit alongside the contemporary alt-folk scene, and the lyrics which are half poetic, half literal, remind me of that kind of thing, too. Often this side of Ida is right up against the sprawling, creeping electric slowcore side. An hour long but I don’t really mind.

1/2 Souled American – Frozen (Moll Tonträger)

Been meaning to get into this cult alt-country band for years, and now that there’s been a slew of reissues and everything’s available digitally, there’s no reason not to. I’ve heard some say not to start with their later albums (this is the second-to-last-one) because they only got weirder and weirder, but I’m happy to disagree with this take because I loved this record. Not to say it isn’t weird—I can imagine this not being everyone’s cup of tea. But this specific combination of molasses-slow playing, traditional folk and country experimentation, and an ambient Chicago experimental nature to the material creates something that just…works. Threatens to go full-on post-rock in a couple of places (instrumental “Two of You”, the relatively busy keys-heavy ending to either “Downblossom” or “Better Who”, I don’t remember which one) but it never fully jumps the rickety tracks. All the better.

1/3 NRBQ – Message for the Mess Age (Forward)

When I think of the 90s, I think of NRBQ. Well, not really, but the long-running bar band/ “your favorite band’s favorite band” did release one of their more well-regarded later-period albums this year, it seems. It’s a pretty solid collection of unclassifiable pop rock that does sound like the work of a band with several accomplished songwriters and musicians in it—some moments sound like they still think it’s the 80s, other moments like that decade never even happened. One of their earlier songs, “I Want You Bad”, is maybe my favorite power pop song of all-time—nothing they’ve done quite reaches that, but “A Little Bit of Bad” is about the closest they’ve gotten among the stuff I’ve heard (it sounds like a classic John Hiatt song without the John Hiatt-ness that’s a turnoff for some people). Elsewhere—the truly weird/out there stuff is kept to a minimum, but they make it count when they dip into it (the name-spelling lesson “Spampinato” is way better than it should be, the bizarre jazz rock of “Everyone’s Smokin’” is a weird and wonderful closer, and who doesn’t love “Girl Scout Cookies”?) and their commitment to not being so self-serious actually helps them pull off the sincerity of “A Better Word for Love” and “Advice for Teenagers”. “Designated Driver” is a little creepy, but I don’t think the boys mean anything nefarious by it. Good stuff.

1/4 Cake Like – Delicious (Avant/Diskunion)

Jesus, this rocks. I don’t really know anything about this band; they’re from New York, but I could’ve told you that by the way this record sounds. Apparently one of the members went on to become an actor in Reno 911, which I don’t think I could’ve told you based on the music. Anyway—do you like “no wave”? Do you like brief Sonic Youth noise bursts combined with sarcastic, droll, “slackery” Breeders indie rock/pop? Do you like albums that are under 30 minutes long? Do you like songs where the lyrics are mostly just a couple lines repeated several times but where pretty much all the lines are really good (and often actually funny)? Well, these are all features of the album Delicious by the band Cake Like. Here are some of my favorite lines from this album:

“Your dad works for my dad”

“I’d kiss a pirate if he’d cry”

“Mary Todd’s a politician, pushing woman”

“Jane brings me lots of things / But lots of things don’t matter”

“Bring some fruitcake, bring some fruitcake / La,la,la,la,la,la,la,la”

1/5 Boyracer – More Songs About Frustration and Self-Hate (Slumberland)

Well, I’ve enjoyed plenty of recent Boyracer material, so perhaps it’s now time to take a closer look at what the long-running British (at this point, at least) indie pop act was doing thirty years ago. Does this album (which, quite boldly, runs through two dozen songs in 62 minutes) really live up to the promise of its title? Well, I haven’t exactly been giving all the lyrics a close read, but what I’ve heard (plus the music) would suggest a certain degree of frustration and self-hate, yes. Compared to the more clear-sounding and upbeat power-pop-punk of modern Boyracer, this album is a lot more in line with the blown-out distortion of 90s indie rock, “lo-fi” and the like–plenty of basement guitar flare-ups and angst-pointing musical choices here. This is kind of an endurance test thing but I like a lot of the songs on here. It’s very 90s to hide the good pop melodies underneath these trappings and Boyracer eventually grew out of it but it’s a strong trope when done well. Want to spend more time with this one.

1/6 Everything But the Girl – Amplified Heart (Blanco y Negro/Atlantic)

First of all, this wasn’t really what I expected. I guess since I only really know the dance mix of “Missing” I was expecting this album to sound a bit more like that? Even though just a bit of critical thinking would’ve reminded me that it’s called a “remix” for a reason. Anyway, between Tracey Thorn’s somewhat soulful voice, the tasteful acoustic guitar, upright bass, and overall jazz sensibilities, this is pretty close to stuff that gets derided as “coffeehouse folk” music. In any case it’s much closer to Suzanne Vega and the Indigo Girls than Stereolab or Portishead or any other electronic-infused contemporary indie rock.

Second of all: this rules. It’s great. It’s simple and beautiful but also deep and unintuitive; the exact kind of thing you’d want indie pop veterans (which Thorn certainly was at this point; see the excellent 80s group Marine Girls) to be doing at this stage. I guess some of the songs have prominent drum machine beats, which is sort of “electronica”; I wouldn’t have connected the proper album with that kind of music on my own but I see how someone more attuned to that world (like, say, Todd Terry) would do so. Especially with “Missing”, which is pretty clearly the most dance-friendly track on the record even in its initial incarnation.

1/7 Hoover – The Lurid Traversal of Route 7 (Dischord)

This was the only LP that this cult Dischord band ever made. I’ve seen Hoover compared to Fugazi, and while I hear it in some places (the first few songs, and, throughout the album, the vocals), I actually think I like this more than any of the Fugazi albums (well, maybe not Repeater or The Argument but come on, I’ve only just now heard this). They do the spitting punk thing very well, and the seven-minute bass riff of “Electrolux” is an early highlight, but things get weirder and more my speed as the album goes on. Starting with the crawling instrumental “Route 7”, continuing to “Regulator Watts” and into the last couple of tracks, Hoover get more jazzy, less aggressive (except in short bursts), and a little more Touch & Go-y. Of course, there’s other Dischord/DC bands experimenting with similar things around this time, and the label would only get more into this stuff as it got closer to Y2K. Still, this feels like one of the strongest from this specific area that I’ve heard.

1/8 Idaho – This Way Out (Caroline/Quigley)

A week or so after Ida, we’re back with the other slowcore band whose name starts with those same three letters. Although this is exhibit A in how useless of a term “slowcore” is on its own, because Tales of Brave Ida sounds pretty much nothing like this album. Of the “known” slowcore bands, this probably sounds closest to American Music Club—it’s dramatic, big-sounding, and not really even “slow” a lot of the time. Although they don’t have that “unclassifiable time-wise” quality AMC did as much; this is much more clearly a 90s indie rock album with thorny guitars and little fancy extra instrumentation. The last Idaho album I heard (other than the newest one) was a later one (Alas) and I remember it being quieter and less electric. This is pretty much the exact kind of band that gets lost if you try to reduce “the nineties” down into a few buzzwords and categories (“lo-fi”, “slowcore”, “indie”). The flip side of this is I’m not so sure how much I like it after an initial listen—but I do like it.

1/9 Crayon – Brick Factory (Harriet/HHBTM)

Now it’s time for some pop music! At least, the kind of pop music I tend to gravitate towards. Crayon were a trio from Bellingham, WA and were associated with Washington’s twee/indie pop movement; two-thirds of them went on to co-found the more well-known Tullycraft, and Crayon only ever made one proper album. This is “noise pop”, I believe—loud 90s guitars in bursts and flares and then twee-ish pop music in between them. There’s two vocalists, neither destined for stardom—one sounds at least like they’re trying to pull off the indie rock frontperson heights and not quite getting there, and the other one leaning fully into the nasally nerdiness of the era. The latter’s songs are the more immediate highlights to me; I like when Crayon pair puffed-up, tough instrumentals with transgressive patheticness to really drive the point home. I’m fully on board with this album, even though not everything reaches the highs of the best (“Pedal”, “Schirm Loop”, “The Snap-Tight Wars”, “Chutes and Ladders”). Stuff like “Reason 2600” and “Knee-High Susan” emanate bad vibes; they’d probably get reductively tagged as “incel” today by people who don’t know how to sit with those vibes. This was never going to be anything more than a cult favorite (and from the looks of it, a small one at that), but that’s why it can do what it does.

1/10 Souls – Tjitchischtsiy (Sudêk) (Telegram)

Seems like every time I do one of these, I find at least one “completely unremembered underground rock album recorded by Steve Albini”. This album is the debut from a band called Souls from Sweden, and it’s definitely a little heavier than the “indie rock” I’d heard from the region previously—the rhythm section has a nice, tough stop-start feel to it that reminds me of Dischord, but there’s also a dynamic and dramatic side to the band that’s a bit more Rid of Me-era PJ Harvey. At the same time, though, it’s more “pop” than either of those points of comparison; I’d say there are moments in here for people who enjoy “indie pop” and/or “pop punk”. A lot of that is thanks to the vocalist, who is doing almost all of the melodic heavy lifting themself, but the rest of the band provide a nice, clean version of noisy-punk-indie that’s a good blank canvas (and then there’s “I Guess”, which sounds like a classic 90s pop punk song slowed down just a bit). Even though the vocals are in English it’s hard for me to tell what they’re singing about (a 90s Albini album with the vocals relatively low in the mix? Wow) , but the, uh, troubling self-hatred of “The Ass I Am” provides a clue.

1/11 Heatmiser – Cop and Speeder (Frontier)

This is my belated/long-overdue completion of the Heatmiser trilogy. I love Mic City Sons (more than a couple of the Elliott Smith solo albums, even!), but I remember being so disappointed in Dead Air that I never even bothered with the middle LP. The verdict? Well, it’s somewhere in between those extremes. They’re still the dime-a-dozen punk-influenced indie rock band they were on their debut, but they got a lot better at it in a short amount of time. These songs really pop for the most part—it’s nice to hear a bit of Smith peaking through in highlights like “Busted Lip” and “Collect to NYC”—there’s even one song, “Antonio Carlos Jobim”, that could’ve been a Smith solo track (although I like the extra push the full band gives it). Neil Gust’s songs are pretty good, too—maybe some would disagree, but the guy co-led a band with Elliott Smith and more or less held his own, that’s an impressive achievement. “Hitting on the Waiter” is one of my favorite things here, a messy, catchy indie-punk track with a ton of personality. Kind of loses steam by the end but I think this is a success.

Also, here’s a joke for all the basketball fans in here: “‘Heat Miser’ is what Jimmy Butler says when Miami doesn’t give him a new contract”. (Is this funny? I don’t know that much about the NBA).

1/12 The Cakekitchen – Stompin’ Thru the Boneyard (Raffmond/Merge)

Hell of an album title, first off. After checking out Peter Jefferies’ 1994 album earlier in this project, we see what his brother Graeme was doing the same year. While The Cakekitchen aren’t the most beloved New Zealand band, they seem to be one of the most consistent, and this album doesn’t alter my impression of them. They sound much more like a “band” than any of Peter’s material, although they’re similarly offbeat and lo-fi. They’re “pop” but not really “jangle”—there’s a very laid-back psychedelic folk sound to a lot of this album, though there are still plenty of electric, fuzzy moments too (like the enjoyably squealy “Mr. Adrian’s Lost in His Last Panic Attack”). This one’s probably less accessible than their earlier records that I’d previously heard, but that’s not really a bad thing. If you can make it through the eight-minute “Hole in My Shoe” early on in the records, then this is the Cakekitchen record for you. Oh, also this is the one with “The Mad Clarinet” on it, which I knew already because the Mountain Goats have covered it.

1/13 Autechre – Amber (Warp/Wax Trax!/TVT)

I said I was going to try to get to some electronic music in this exercise, so here we are. I didn’t want to listen to three hours of Aphex Twin, so an hour of Autechre it is. I think this is one of their more well-regarded albums, but they’re one of those acts where everything has positive reviews so somebody else will have to tell me if it was a good place to start or not. Apparently this is considered “ambient”, at least according to Wikipedia, but this certainly isn’t what comes to mind when I think of that genre. I mean, sure, it’s way too freeform and nonlinear to slot into anything resembling mainstream electronic music (almost like it’s too…intelligent? No, that’s stupid), but these songs are still very busy and active. Not really sure if I “like” this, but it’s interesting to me and didn’t scare me off trying out more of their albums sometime in the future. It’s probably too long for me but I’m too scared of getting crucified by RYM power users to say this confidently.

1/14: Antietam – Rope-a-Dope (Homestead)

Antietam! Louisville, Kentucky 1990s indie rock! This is one of the bands that not a lot of people know but those who do really love them. I already used the “your favorite band’s favorite band” cliche once in this exercise but it applies here too. Yo La Tengo covered them before they were even indie famous, and just look at the lineup they were able to pull together for their 2021 Wink O’Bannon tribute LP. I suspected I’d like this, arguably their most well-known album—and I do! It opens with this awesome keyboard-heavy 60s garage rock song called “Hands Down”, a side of them punctuated by a Dead Moon cover later on in the album (it still sounds great now, but I can only imagine what a breath of fresh air it felt like in ‘94). Like YLT or Eleventh Dream Day though, they aren’t defined by this side of them, as just-as-good highlights like the long, sprawling “Pine” also show. I will be honest, I read the article on the Neil Gaiman allegations halfway through this album and so I spent a good portion of this listen thinking about how much I despise that evil man. Even with that though, I could tell how great this is.

1/15 Strapping Fieldhands – Discus (Omphalos)

First album from the long-running Philly lo-fi cult band. Based on my limited knowledge of the Strapping Fieldhands I’ve kind of mentally lumped them in with Beefheart-influenced 90s indie rock bands like The Grifters and Thinking Fellers, but that doesn’t really describe Discus. It’s a lot…fluffier? And catchier. It’s very Flying Nun/New Zealand indie pop-reminiscent to me (particularly Tall Dwarfs), and even reminds me of Shrimper Records bands like Refrigerator. On some of the more outwardly catchy tracks—“Battle Down the 1/4 Mile”, “Now We Have Slipped”, “Mysterious Girl”, “Arrogant Flower”—it kind of feels like they’re doing with folk rock what Guided by Voices were doing with 60s proto-power pop/bubblegum. And there’s a lot of good pop songs on this album. I’m not entirely sure if it’s a great record on the whole but it’s one of the more interesting ones, and I’m certainly not done checking this band out after hearing this one.

1/16 Ride – Carnival of Light (Creation)

All four of the biggest Britpop bands put out albums in 1994, and half of them I haven’t heard. And yet, I’ve chosen to be difficult and listen to Ride’s “Britpop” (derogatory) album instead. What can I say? I like Ride, I like some Britpop sometimes, so maybe I’ll like this album even if it doesn’t have the best reputation. And…it’s pretty good, I think! I like this more than most of the big Britpop albums I’ve heard. At the same time, though, I see why this album failed to crossover into the Britpop mainstream and pissed off shoegaze fans at the same time. For one, it’s like 5% shoegaze at most—it’s a pretty hard pivot to psychedelic pop rock with reasonably-volumed guitars. On the other hand, Mark Gardener and Andy Bell….do not have Britpop personalities. They are not Jarvis Cocker or Liam Gallagher (although they did make this too long, like many classic Britpop albums). This wasn’t gonna cut it at the time, and its appeal is probably limited to the subset of Ride fans who like their shoegaze albums but not necessarily because they’re shoegaze albums (and that does describe me; and while I like this album i wouldn’t say it’s a masterpiece exactly).

1/17 Zuzu’s Petals – The Music of Your Life (Roadrunner/Twin/Tone)

The second and final album from the fairly short-lived Minneapolis band led by Laurie Lindeen, an author and professor (and, apparently, ex-wife of Paul Westerberg) who passed away last year. I hear a good deal of the thornier side of the pre-Nirvana “college rock” sound here (a lot of which came out of MPLS to some degree), in how the album combines folk rock with noisy underground indie rock/punk and intermittent pop moments. Throwing Muses is the band that it reminds me of the most; Scrawl and Tsunami come to mind, too. I had this on in the background and it did nothing for me; actively listening is the way to go for this one. It’s a well-made album and I enjoy it, even though part of me wishes there was more immediately catchy songs like “Feel Like Going Home”. There’s kind of a push and pull here between wanting to be a more challenging rock record and being a post-grunge pop album; maybe it would’ve been stronger if it had committed to one over the other but it’s still worthwhile as it is.

1/18 Kicking Giant – Alien I.D. (K)

Apparently this was a New York duo who eventually moved to Olympia and put out music on K Records; this was their K debut after some self-released cassettes and ended up being their last album. We kind of get the best of both world in terms of NY and PNW indie rock here—there’s Sonic Youth-style distorted no wave rock and some odd pop music in the rough as well. A lot of it reminds me of bits and pieces of more well-known bands, but it’s deep and intentional enough that I don’t think it’s “derivative”. There’s a song in the second half of the record called “The Town Idiot” that’s kind of annoying; I was getting ready to dismiss it as a pretentious SY ripoff but I can’t after listening closely. Kim Gordon would never debase herself like this, but here are Kicking Giant donning clown makeup and declaring themselves the town idiot. All the best pop songs are tacked onto the end of the album for some reason; I thought maybe they were singles included as bonus tracks but it seems like they’ve always been part of the album proper. An interesting one to (probably) end this chapter of this exercise.